Church Planting Ministry!

In Deed and Truth Ministries is a church planting ministry that planted our first ‘mother’ church over 20 years ago. The most effective way to reach people with the Gospel is through church planting. Today, Calvary Chapel Tonj is a vibrant church of 1,200 people with 34 ‘baby’ churches planted in our CHE villages around Tonj South and Tonj East. These churches have brought reconciliation and peace and transformed entire communities. As our CHE program has expanded rapidly (it’s now in 59 villages), and CHE’s are sharing health and spiritual lessons door to door, we found there were new believers putting their trust in Jesus but with no church in their villages, they were wandering like sheep without a shepherd. Through CHE we formed bible listening groups for these new believers and then sent our pastors to help them establish a church. This method worked until we started to have so many church plants we didn’t have enough trained pastors to cover them. We have been praying the Lord would bring more laborers for His harvest and He has answered that prayer and raised up men from within these communities. These men are called by God, they love Jesus and want to represent Him with the message of hope and salvation. Today we have 35 church plants and 45 pastors!

As we appointed these men of faith to oversee our new churches, we knew their greatest need was for pastoral ministry training. We are blessed to have our Senior Pastor Mabior Bona Bol, a gifted and powerful preacher at CC Tonj, gather these men every month for accountability, fellowship and pastoral training.

The real need is for deeper bible study and understanding. This need is what compelled us to pray and ask God to give us a bible school. Since May 2022 we have partnered with Intensive Care Ministries in training 20 of these pastors at a deeper level, working towards a diploma in Pastoral Ministry. This is a program we want for all our pastors to go through. They also have a certificate class for any person feeling called to serve in ministry. As you can see from the photo, space to teach and train has been a challenge. Our desire is to be equipped to run these classes in the future for years to come. At the end of last year, we launched the plan to build Tonj Bible Institute and through your generous donations we have started to construct our school.

This building project will take approximately three months. Every brick has to be made, so we started making bricks by faith in April!

We already had land to build on where our church is, so in June we broke ground and started digging the foundations.

God has given us this amazing opportunity to work with Him and partner with Him in this ministry. He has given us the foundation of Jesus Christ to build this ministry on and He is the master builder, creating beauty out of dust.

“For we are God’s fellow workers; you are God’s field, you are God’s building. According to the grace of God which was given to me, as a wise master builder I have laid the foundation, and another builds on it. But let each one take heed how he builds on it. For no other foundation can anyone lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ.” 1 Corinthians 3:9-11

We’ll keep you updated on the progress over the next few months. The official opening ceremony will be in early December. If anyone would like to attend, please contact us for details.

• Prayer point – As God’s fellow workers would you prayerfully consider helping us support these 45 pastors? We have set up a website and each pastor is available for sponsorship. For as little as $25 a month you can partner with these men of God and their calling.  https://pastors.indeedandtruth.org/